An open experiment in creative fiction by Stuart Nager

No Outlet (SIGNS: #AtoZChallenge)

You don’t tell strangers your troubles…hell, you don’t even tell your family. Forget the wife, kids, or what passes for your best friend. You keep it all bottled up inside, letting a few cold ones after work take the edge off. Most nights, more than a few cold ones.

So you stumble into the house too many times way past when you said you’d be home. Food cold, icy stares from the Mrs., kids hiding in their rooms.

You drag yourself up to the fridge, get another bottle, twist off the top.

Sitting in your chair, you stare at nothing.

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For the April 2014 A to Z Blog Challenge, you will find a story a day (except Sundays) from me. A to Z: Staring with A on Tuesday, April 1st and ending with Z on Wednesday, April 30th.

Signs is my theme for this year’s outing. Road signs, building signs, warning signs…Signs alert us to a multitude of messages. My plan is to use the alphabet through Signage, but not to stick to what the sign was originally intended to convey. So, the genre of story writing, and styles, of the posts will vary as my mood and interpretation sees fit. Possibly a poem or two. We’ll see.

I’m also trying something more of a challenge: each post will be a Drabble. A Drabble is 100 Words Exactly.